Canadian IPOs Dry in January, Slowest Month Since 2001

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian initial public offerings
dried up in January, the first month in more than a dozen years
without an IPO in the country.

The shutout contrasts with the same month a year ago, when
Agellan Commercial Real Estate Investment Trust had its $150
million IPO and sales by Alpha Peak Leisure Inc. and Hombre
Capital Inc. together added $1 million to the monthly total,
according to data compiled by Bloomberg. October 2001 was the
last month without an IPO in Canada, the data show.

“It’s not surprising given where we were at the end of the
year and the way that the fourth quarter set up the month of
January,” Dean Braunsteiner, IPO services leader for PwC
Canada, a member of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd.,
said today in a telephone interview. “But it’s too early into
the year to really make any sense of predictions as to what to
expect.”

The most recent Canadian IPO was completed Dec. 19, when
British Columbia bus designer Grande West Transportation Group
Inc. raised C$5 million ($4.5 million). Companies sold $239
million of shares in four December deals, led by Cardinal Energy
Ltd.’s sale on Dec. 10, the data show.

Canadian companies raised $2.93 billion in initial stock
sales in 2013, up 10 percent from $2.66 billion in 2012,
according to the data.

Companies did turn to Canadian markets for secondary sales
last month, raising $1.8 billion from 26 equity financings, the
data show. The largest deals included Chemtrade Logistics Income
Fund’s $320.7 million sale, a $240.3 million share sale by Ski-Doo snowmobile maker BRP Inc. and Tourmaline Oil Corp.’s $173
million financing, the data show.

Braunsteiner says he’s “cautiously optimistic” about IPO
activity this year, though the backlog of deals isn’t as good as
it was a year ago.